


Limbo

by AconitumNapellus



Series: Filthy [4]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Rape, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 02:19:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17716190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: Another angle on Filthy. Illya's experience from when he was captured and held as a sex slave in a New York basement. This is very heavy, and covers the time from his capture to his rescue by Napoleon (the hurt-no-comfort), and a little catch-up at the end, a year later. Hopefully I've put this dark series to bed.





	Limbo

This is the end.

There have been many times in Illya’s life when he’s faced the end. He’s been dropped into fast-setting plaster of paris. He’s been knocked over the head more times than he can count. He’s been shot too close to vital organs. He’s plummeted towards hard water. He’s knelt with his head on a guillotine, almost been hung with a noose, faced a firing squad.

The fact that he’s still here proves that he has a knack for escaping endings, but this one feels particularly low key, particularly squalid, so muted and mundane that it’s easy to believe he’s facing his last few minutes of life. He’s not terrified, at least, but he does feel fear. He doesn’t fear the pain, but he fears the ending. He doesn’t want to die.

‘Just shoot him and put the body in the furnace,’ the Thrush man had said.

Illya had never known who he was. He had been kept in a small room roped to a chair and they had pumped him so full of drugs that he felt like he was going to die or melt or float away to another dimension. At times he had hardly known his own name. He hadn’t told them anything, and in time they had decided there was no point in keeping him.

‘Just shoot him and put the body in the furnace.’

They had tied a cloth round his eyes and released his arms and legs and made him stand. He had stumbled, swaying, feeling the floor moving under his feet. His back ached and his head ached. He felt half numb.

‘Toilet,’ he had muttered, because he had been tied on that chair for so long, given sips of water and bits of food, but never untied. His bladder was so full it was painful. He needed the toilet, but if they let him go to the toilet he might have a chance to escape.

One of the men laughed, but another said, ‘Let him go, or it will be messy after you kill him.’

What a cheering thought. They had led him to the toilet, blindfolded, but they hadn’t left him alone for an instant, and he had been so tired, his head so swimming with the drugs, that he couldn’t begin to formulate a plan.

Then there was the car, and they had told him to climb into the trunk, and lie down, so he had. He had almost dozed off as the engine rumbled and the floor vibrated beneath him. It was a short journey, and they had brought him out into cold air, then taken him into another building, this building he was in now. A walk across an echoing, empty room, bare floorboards resounding under his feet. Then a door, and his captor took off the blindfold so he could navigate the steep brick steps. He could hear the furnace hissing somewhere ahead.

So, this is the end. He stands in a squalid room with a bare bulb hanging from a twisted flex. The muzzle of the gun is in the small of his back. He waits for the shot. There isn’t anywhere to go. There aren’t any words he can say. He sees the brick walls that, a long time ago, had been painted white. He sees a floor made of rows of red bricks, worn smooth by feet. He sees a bed against the wall, a metal-framed thing like something from a children’s home, low, with a bare, dirty mattress. He sees long white-painted joists crossing the white ceiling, holding up the floorboards of the echoing space above. There are hooks in the joists, above the bed. In the corner, there is a galvanised steel bucket, and a ceramic sink on the wall. It’s a miserable, squalid place to die.

His captor says, ‘Take off your clothes. Everything. Lie on the bed.’

He feels a moment of confusion. Why does he need to strip to be killed? Does this man want to keep his clothes? Does he like the suit? Why does he need to lie down to be killed?

‘Take – off – your – clothes,’ the man says again, pushing a little harder with the gun.

‘You can get one like this cheaply enough,’ he says, because his suits aren’t like Napoleon’s tailored ones. He can’t be bothered with that. He just buys them off the rail. ‘Besides, I don’t think I’m your size.’

The gun just presses harder, so he obeys. He’s not sure why he’s obeying, since he’s going to be killed anyway, but there’s a fear there that he can’t deny. It’s instinctive to cling to as many more moments of life as he can. So he removes his jacket and tosses it onto the floor. He carefully undoes his tie and unbuttons his shirt and drops them onto the pile. He takes off his shoes and socks and steps onto the cold brick floor. He opens his trousers and pushes them down.

He hesitates a moment before removing his underpants, but the gun is cold against his back now, the metal touching his bare skin. It feels that much more present, more real, pressed against the vulnerability of the small of his back, right where a shot would shatter the spinal column. So he pushes down his underpants and steps out, and stands there, naked, in the room.

‘On the bed,’ the man tells him. Later, he will find out his name is Lee.

He crosses the room and lies down, eyeing his captor, whose face he has hardly seen until now. He’s a dark haired, slim man, taller than he is. He doesn’t like the look in his eyes or the way his gaze moves along Illya’s body as he lies. The mattress is chilly beneath him, and springs press into his back. There are chains attached to the bed, at the head and the foot, and the man takes hold of his wrists and lifts them above his head, fixing the chains around them. He chains his ankles, holding his legs apart. Illya lies there, full of apprehension, the sensation of his nudity crawling through him.

The man just stands there, regarding him. Then he smiles.

‘Very nice,’ he says. ‘You’ll do very well.’

Illya’s voice is hesitant when he speaks. He’s afraid now, more afraid than he had been when he thought he was just going to be shot, quickly.

‘Weren’t you supposed to kill me?’ he asks. ‘Your boss won’t be very happy.’

The man crouches down so that his eyes are level with Illya’s. ‘When I decide to kill you, if you give me cause,’ he says softly, ‘I will tie a plastic bag over your head until you stop breathing. Then I will put you in the chest freezer. When you’re good and solid, then I will cut you up. There’s no mess, that way. I will feed you into the furnace, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left. And no one will ever know you were here.’

‘Why bother with the bag?’ Illya asks coolly, to cover over the deep unease he feels. ‘The freezer would do the job well enough.’

‘I might take you up on that,’ the man tells him.

He stands again and goes to the door. When he leaves the room he turns the light off, and Illya is left in utter darkness.

_When I decide to kill you_.

Those words repeat in his mind, and he tries to interpret their meaning. The man isn’t going to kill him right away. He’s making a decision to go against Thrush orders, or he’s been told something else, perhaps when Illya was in the trunk of that car. He feels apprehension crawl through him. There’s only one reason he can think of for why he is naked and chained like this. The situation is going to turn sexual. Before he is killed, something terrible is going to happen.

He lies on the bed, staring into the darkness, trying to make out anything above his head. It’s too dark for that, though. With no window and no light coming through the doorframe, it’s dark as the Styx.

He pulls at the chains around his wrists, then at the ones on his ankles. He pulls until he is sore, but the bed frame is strong, and nothing gives, neither frame nor chain. The man had clicked padlocks into place to hold the chains tightly around his limbs. There’s no way of opening those, so he concentrates on where they’re attached to the bed. He tries moving his arms and finds he can slide the chains along the rail of the headboard, but he can’t pull them free. Pins and needles are setting in in his fingers, but he feels along the chains until he is touching the smooth, cylindrical bar of the headboard. There are padlocks there too, holding the chains looped around the metal. There’s nothing he can do. He doesn’t have a pick in his mouth any more, not since he was searched when he was first captured. They were very efficient at that search.

He runs his fingers over the padlocks, but it’s a vain attempt at finding a release that doesn’t exist. He can’t free his hands, and he can’t free his feet, so he can’t do anything but lie here.

 _When I decide to kill you_.

Being killed is a certain thing, a final thing. It’s a destination. But this is limbo. He could be kept alive here for a long, long time.

 

((O))

 

He didn’t realise he had fallen asleep, but perhaps it’s no surprise. Alone here, in utter dark and silence, finally he had dropped off. He wakes, blinking, discovering the pitch dark again. He remembers what led him to this place. The awful feeling of being drugged is wearing off, but it was a tiring twenty-four hours in that interrogation room. It’s tiring, resisting questioning, especially when you’re being pumped full of drugs.

He can hear footsteps above him now. There’s not a glimmer of light, but there are footsteps up there, and he feels something sprinkling onto his bare skin, as if dust falls when people walk above. He’s thirsty, and his hands are half numb from being held in the chains. He wishes he knew how long he’s been here, but there’s no way to tell. He had already started to lose his sense of time under interrogation, and although he had been able to tell it was day by the light through the blindfold, he hadn’t been able to tell what time of day. Now he’s been asleep, and he has no idea how long he might have slept for.

A noise starts up above. It’s the resounding noise of music at high volume, the bass line coming through the ceiling but all the finer details lost. There are more footsteps, back and forth. More dust falls. The footsteps gather, until it sounds as if there’s a crowd up there. The feet move in time to the music, the dust falls in time with the music. He inhales dust, and sneezes, and a shiver runs through his skin like a ripple. It’s cold down here. It’s too cold to lie without a cover. If he were moving he would be fine, but there’s no way to keep warm when he has to lie so still.

The light flares on, and he blinks, dazzled. The door opens, and he tries to see. Two men walk in. One of them is his captor. The other is a big man. He’s not sure if he’s overweight or just solid, but he’s big, thick-necked, with short, wide hands that make him think of a mole’s paws. His hair is retreating in typical male pattern baldness, and his face is flabby, and, as Illya’s eyes adjust, he sees something in his face. He doesn’t know exactly what it is that he sees, but he doesn’t like it.

‘ – too good to throw away,’ Lee is saying. ‘I know my orders, but sometimes you have to take the opportunity. After all – ’

They both stand and look at him. He feels his skin crawl, that shiver running back up through his body. The skin of his balls crinkles, and he is intensely self-conscious of that movement. He feels so naked, and there’s nothing he can do.

Suddenly he knows the look on that man’s face. It’s hunger. He is a man who wants to consume.

‘I like him,’ the stranger says. ‘You’re right. He’s a good looking boy. When has your judgement ever been wrong? Yes. I like him.’

He digs into his pocket and pulls out his wallet.

‘Never been touched?’ he asks.

His captor smiles. ‘His apparent low libido is on his file, and there’s no evidence of anything like that. I can’t speak for his personal history, of course, but do you think he has?’

They’re both eyeing him. Illya wants to say something but he doesn’t know what. He feels as if every clever word in his head has flown away. The man’s look terrifies him more than had the gun in his spine.

‘No,’ the stranger says. ‘No, he’s never been touched. You’re right.’

He opens his wallet and pulls out a sheaf of bills. He leafs through them with his thumb.

‘Fifty?’

‘For the first bite of the cherry,’ his captor says. ‘Fifty is a very fair price.’

His captor takes the money, and leaves the room.

The stranger turns to Illya, and smiles. He steps over to the bed and just stands there, looking down at him, regarding him as if he were selecting meat at a butcher’s counter. There’s that look on his face; naked hunger. Illya shivers again. There is gooseflesh running all over his skin.

‘Well,’ the man says. ‘Well, aren’t you pretty?’

‘Fuck off straight to hell,’ Illya says. He doesn’t know what else to say.

The man only laughs. Illya is not in a position to negotiate. He has no power. He’s chained to the bed and there’s nothing he can do. The man gets onto the bed, kneeling between Illya’s open legs. He reaches out one of his fat, broad hands and strokes lightly over Illya’s cock. Illya jerks his pelvis as if he’s been burnt, but there’s nowhere to go.

The man puts his hands to the chains at the foot of the bed. He hadn’t realised until now that his ankle chains aren’t padlocked to the bed. They’re just clipped with sprung clips, impossible for him to open, but easy for anyone with free hands. The man unclips both chains simultaneously. His legs are free, and Illya acts. He lifts his legs, clamping them about the man’s head, trying to wrestle against him to somehow put him out of action. But the man ducks down and headbutts Illya so hard in the crotch that for a moment he can’t even see. Nausea explodes through his body. While he’s trying to fight past that awful feeling the man takes the ankle chains and lifts his legs up, fixing the chains to hooks in the joists above, pulling them up so short that Illya’s pelvis is lifted off the bed, and his weight hangs from the chains.

He raises his hand and slaps Illya’s behind with such force that his body sways, wrenching his ankles. Again, he raises his hand. This time it falls on Illya’s cheek, jerking his head sideways. His ears ring and for a moment everything blacks out.

He comes back from the ringing and the flashes in his vision, and sees the man standing next to the bed, panting. The look on his face is bestial, a terrible mixture of anger and greed.

‘Feisty fucker,’ he says in a low, hungry voice, rubbing his hand at the bulge between his legs, clothed over by his trousers. ‘You’re a feisty fucker aren’t you? But you’re still sweet as a nut.’

He smiles, and sickness rises in Illya’s craw.

‘God. I like a fighter,’ the man says. ‘Look at you. You’re a fucking wild cat. Look at the dick on you. God. Look at those balls. Look at that sweet, tight ass all ready for me. You’re hungry for me, aren’t you, pretty boy? Don’t pretend you’re not.’

There’s nothing he can say. There’s nothing he can do. He lies there, dizzy and shaking, the weight of his legs and lower body just hanging from his ankles. The man gets back onto the bed, kneeling between his upraised legs, his hand at his own groin. He undoes the fastenings of his trousers, pushes the cloth down, and his cock springs from its prison, already fully erect. Illya can’t help but stare. It is thick and long, and looks so, so hard. It’s a terrible thing, dark with blood, the head flaring, moisture glistening at the tip. He had never seen an erection as a weapon before. When he had heard women suggest the idea, he had scoffed. Now it looks worse than a gun.

‘I’m here to break you in,’ the man says with a wolfish smile. ‘I’m here to give you a lesson in how to be fucked.’

He leans forward over Illya, pressing his lips against his chest, kissing him hungrily, trailing his tongue across his skin. He comes further, putting hands on either side of Illya’s head, holding him in an iron grip as he presses his wet lips against Illya’s mouth and tries to force his tongue inside. Illya can feel the heat of that hard cock brushing against his own, and he tries to move, but the hands on either side of his head grip so hard it makes his skull ache.

‘Open your mouth, boy,’ the man tells him, pressing his fingers hard into Illya’s head. ‘Let me in.’

He won’t open his mouth. He can’t. He feels sick at the wetness of the man’s saliva, at the scent of his breath. The tongue pushes through his lips again, running across his teeth. The fingers press so hard he feels as if his skull is going to crack. Then he does open his mouth, terrified of the consequences of refusal. The tongue enters in, probing so deeply it makes him retch. He can’t breathe. The weight of that man is so heavy over him, and his mouth is pressed so hard over Illya’s own. He can’t breathe, and he lies there and waits for the kiss to end.

At last the man lifts away from his mouth. He kneels there between Illya’s legs, stroking the veined hardness of his own cock. He spits on his palm and runs the saliva up and down his cock, then palms Illya’s aching balls out of the way, and spits again. The gob hits his perineum and trickles down slowly into the pucker below.

‘God,’ the man says, touching his finger to that pucker, swirling his fingertip around.

Illya jerks his hips, trying to get away, spitting out all the American swear words he knows. But the finger moves as he moves, following after him, pressing against the tight entry until it pushes through into the raw inside of his body. The man moves his finger inside, rotating and stroking, and the sensation shivers all through him. It’s a terrible feeling, as if his mind were alive with fireworks, screaming at him to get away from this intensity of stimulation. He wants to be sick.

‘God, I like a virgin. I like a fighter,’ the man says, his eyes gleaming with need. He grips a hand around his own cock, stroking himself as if he is in love. ‘You want this, don’t you?’ he asks. ‘I know you want this. I’m going to fuck you so hard up the ass I’m going to knock your guts out your mouth.’

‘I will kill you,’ Illya growls. There’s no point in saying anything, but words are all he has. That finger is inside him, and it’s such an odd, awful intrusive feeling, being fingered like an animal at the vets. His body is spasming against it, because it feels so wrong. He spits out his words. ‘I will tear your fucking head from your body and drop kick it into the Hudson.’

He tries to move himself again, and the finger stays inside him. There isn’t anywhere he can go. It’s touching something inside him, making awful shivers run through him. The finger presses against that place, and palpates, and he cries out involuntarily, dizzy at the flooding feeling that he doesn’t know how to process.

‘You like that, huh?’ the man asks, pressing again, making him cry out again. ‘Huh? You’re telling me no, but you can’t hide that you like it. I’m pressing buttons you never knew you had, aren’t I?’

‘Get the fuck out of my body,’ he says. He feels dizzy and sick and so, so confused at the feelings that man has prompted in him.

The man laughs, stroking more spit onto his cock. He withdraws his finger and draws it beneath Illya’s nose, laughing. He takes hold of Illya’s hip with one hand, and angles that hard, thick cock, touching the tip to his anus. Then he pushes in.

Illya swears aloud, trying to move backwards, away from the pain. The entry burns, his muscles cramping against that awful thickness, the pain of it shooting in arrows through his whole body. It’s a terrible pain, a terrible feeling of wrongness. It sings in his mind, making him dizzy, but he can’t get away. He pulls and yanks against the chains, but he can’t get away. He tries to jerk his pelvis, to pull away from the impalement, and at last he manages. The cock slips out, and his muscles cramp tighter than before.

The man raises his hand and his palm cracks down across Illya’s cheek. Then his hand is on his throat, tightening until he chokes.

‘Don’t fight me, you little shit,’ he hisses. ‘Don’t fight me. It’s going to happen. You’re too sweet to be left a virgin. I’m giving you a goddamn gift.’

He presses his hand harder and harder, until Illya’s ears sing and he stops trying to pull away. Then he puts the tip of his cock against that opening again, and presses in hard. Illya cries out and tries again to pull away, and the hand comes down again to slap his face. For a moment he is floating in darkness. When he comes back he can feel it there, pushing in, until it is right the way inside him, the man’s pelvis pressing hard against his ass. The man’s hand is on his cock, stroking it, rolling it under his palm. He roughly fondles Illya’s bruised balls, and nausea floods him again.

The man starts to move in him, pulling almost all the way out, then pushing in hard again. Every thrust sends new spears of pain through his gut. He screams out his pain at every entry, fighting and struggling. Awful thrills run through him again, something autonomic that he can’t help but makes him feel a shame that he can’t bear. His cock is hardening. That man’s hand is on it, pumping him, and he feels hot with terrible shame and confusion. He closes his eyes and tries to pretend that none of this is real, but it’s so terribly real, and he can’t get away. The man slams home again and again, jerking his ankles against the chains, knocking his head against the metal bars of the headboard. Illya grips the metal rail in his hands and opens his mouth and bellows aloud, trying to scream away his pain.

His cock is jerking. God. He’s coming over himself, his balls tightening with sick pain left over from that terrible blow between his legs. Then the man thrusts in with a cry, his hips making little butts as he comes inside Illya’s body.

Silence falls. It is terrible. That man is kneeling there, eyes closed, his arm hugging close around Illya’s thigh, sweat itching between them. His cock is still hard in his body. Illya’s feet have grown numb and his ankles sear and his wrists sear. The pain in the centre of him comes in cramps and waves, pushing against the softening cock inside him, cramping down against the firm heat. He is shaking so badly that he can make no voluntary movements.

The man opens his eyes, and smiles. Then he pulls his cock out of Illya’s body, and it is followed by a terrible trickle of cum. He tucks his limp, damp cock back into his clothes, fastens his trousers, and leaves the room.

Illya lies there, half-hangs, shaking. He wants to weep. He can feel the cum moving slowly down the crack between his legs, down towards his back. His chest is spattered with cum, his own cum. He feels dizzy with pain and horror and shame. That man made him come. He ejaculated, that man’s hand on him, his cock inside his body. He made him come…

The door opens, and it is his captor, standing there, a look of fury on his face. He strides across the room and slaps Illya viciously across the face, and says, ‘Make that much noise again and I’ll fucking leather you to within an inch of your life.’

 _Again?_ Nausea is so strong in him he almost vomits. He can taste that man’s tongue in his mouth. He can feel the burning of his cock in his body. _Again... Oh god, oh god…_

He doesn’t believe in any gods, but he prays. _Oh, god, please help me. Please set me free. Oh god, please set me free…_

His captor is wiping the mattress down, wiping him down with the same damp cloth. He can see the crimson of blood on the cloth when the man brings it from between Illya’s legs. He can’t tell from the feeling how badly he is bleeding. He just knows that it hurts. It hurts beyond all experience Illya has known. It’s a terrible feeling.

The man unhooks Illya’s ankles and he drops the few inches back onto the bed, his legs falling limp and trembling. He can’t move. He can’t even begin to fight as the man clips the chains back to the foot of the bed. His entire body is shaking. He musters his strength and tries, limply, to pull against the chains, but it’s no use.

His captor runs the tap in the little sink in the corner of the room. He wrings out the cloth, then drops it into the corner. He goes to the door and opens it, and says, ‘Come in, why don’t you? He’s ready for you now.’

Another man comes into the room, another man who stands there and lets his eyes run up and down Illya’s body. He lies on the bed, shaking, his heart seeming to sink down through his chest, through the mattress, away from his body.

‘Listen,’ he begins, but he doesn’t know what to say. He can’t promise a ransom from U.N.C.L.E.. He knows all too well that Waverly doesn’t pay ransoms. What can he say?

Both men are looking at him, and the fact of his nudity flushes all over him again. It’s worse now. His chest is damp and sticky. His cock is lax, with a bead of cum still at the tip. There’s that endless, throbbing pain between his legs, and, worse than that, the echo feeling of that man’s erection deep inside him. The echo memory of what he did.

Money is changing hands again. He doesn’t see the amount.

‘Take care,’ his captor says. ‘He needs some breaking in.’

‘I like them lively,’ the new man says.

Illya wants to close his eyes and sink away, but he doesn’t dare allow the vulnerability of closing his eyes. He watches his captor leave and the new man step forward. He’s such an average man, reasonable looking, just a man off the street in jeans and t-shirt, and a jacket hanging over his arm.

‘Please,’ Illya says. ‘Let me go.’

The man laughs lightly, sets his jacket down over the foot of the bed, and runs his fingertips down Illya’s chest, from his neck to the thickening hair about his cock. Those shivers start up again. He can’t bear this.

‘Ain’t you a delight?’ the man asks, stroking his hand over Illya’s cock. ‘Good looking guy. Have you ever given a man head?’

‘I will bite it off,’ Illya promises darkly, and the man laughs.

‘You know, I believe you. Lee said you need breaking in but I’m not the man to risk that. I’ll go down the conventional channel.’

His laugh shows a mouth of white teeth. Illya clenches his hands. He doesn’t know how to bear this all over again.

The man unhooks one ankle, and he kicks hard enough to break his jaw. He would have broken his jaw, if the man hadn’t skipped back in time.

‘Don’t,’ the man says.

He is pulling his belt from the belt loops. He whips the belt through the air and it catches Illya’s thigh in a stinging blow that takes his breath. He unhooks the other ankle, and when Illya thrashes he whips him again. He grabs hold of him bodily and twists him over on the mattress so he’s face down, his arms twisted over, wrists pressing together against the rail they’re chained to. For a moment he just leans on him with all his weight, pinning him chest-down to the bed, his mouth close to Illya’s ear. He pins him long enough to assert his dominance, then starts to clip Illya’s ankles back to the rail. Every time he struggles there’s another blow of the belt, leaving his flesh throbbing.

He comes onto the bed behind him, between his legs, and strokes a hand over Illya’s behind.

‘Damn,’ he says. ‘What a peach. I can’t believe you ain’t been fucked till today. Someone should’ve done you by now.’

Illya lets his cheek rest on the mattress, and stares at the brick wall opposite, trying to take himself away from this misery. But the hands are there, touching him, roaming over him, then jerking him up so his hips are off the bed, his arms stretched out.

‘You stay like that,’ the man warns him. ‘You stay like that with your pretty ass in the air for me, or I’ll whip you so hard you’ll beg to behave.’

 _Please, don’t,_ he thinks. _Please don’t…_

‘If you let me go, I will reward you well,’ he says, trying to keep his voice steady.

How can he sound calm and commanding lying like this, buttocks in the air, spread like this? He can feel his cock and balls dangling between his legs. The man’s hand passes over them, stroking them. He wants to scream and beg and cry.

‘Boy, you’re already rewarding me,’ the man says in a hungry voice. ‘Damn. Other guy made you bleed, huh? So this is gonna hurt, but I don’t mind that. Makes you tighter for me.’

There’s that feeling again, the heat of a hard cock pressing against the tender opening, ripping its way inside. Illya pushes his mouth against the mattress and moans.

_Make that much noise again, and I’ll leather you to within an inch of your life._

He believes it. He has no reason to think it’s an empty threat. So he buries his face against the mattress and moans deep into the fabric as the man plunges into him again and again.

He’s right. It hurts. It hurts so badly that with each entry his ears sing. The man’s hands hold him up, gripping his hips hard, pulling him back against his thrusts. Illya chokes his pain against the mattress, and waits for it to finish. The man keeps banging against him, ripping into him, gasping with pleasure, until he’s moving urgently, his fingers squeezing so tightly it hurts, coming into him suddenly, with a deep groan.

Then it is over, and the man leaves him, and his captor is welcoming another paying customer into the room.

 

((O))

 

It is utterly dark. There’s no sound from above now. The dark is so absolute that it presses on his eyes, and he lies there, shivering in the damp cool.

He is so tired, and his muscles hurt so much. He had struggled against the first man, struggled against the second, the third, the fourth. His wrists and ankles sear. He aches with bruises. He is dirty, sticky between his legs. His mind is reeling in disbelief. He hurts so much right at the core of him, where they had plunged into him over and over. How could any of this have happened?

He remembers how his cock had hardened that first time. It happened more than once that night. He feels sick at the thought of it, his mind whirling in confusion. What did it mean, that he had got an erection while that man fucked him? Is there some part of him, some terrible part, that enjoyed the experience? How could he have got hard? How could he have come? He doesn’t know what to think. It was as if he had somehow invited what had happened, as if he had given out a signal to tell those men that he wanted to be raped. His throat feels thick, his body crawling with self-loathing. He wishes he could cut off his genitals and throw them into a dark corner, so they will never betray him again.

He has no idea what time it is. He hadn’t been sure what time it was when he was brought here, and then that first innocent nap had robbed him of all idea. That thumping music from above suggests he’s under some kind of club, and that shut off a couple of hours ago, so perhaps it’s the small hours of the morning, but he doesn’t know. He knows that the evening passed in an awful blur of men coming into that room and raping him, and now he’s exhausted and full of pain, and he wants to cry. He’s hungry, and full of pain, and he wants to cry. He wants the toilet, and he wants to sit there and expel every trace of what those men left in him. He wants to cry.

A tear runs down his face in the dark, and he can’t get his hand close enough to wipe it away. Before he was left for the last time, Lee hooked his wrist chains to the outer edges of the headboard, maybe to make it harder for him to attempt escape. There’s nothing he can do about padlocks anyway, but now he can’t even bring his hands close together or scratch an itch on his head. He can’t even move his hands much to relieve the pins and needles.

He lies there, feeling the heaviness in his bladder, shivering under the dark, cool air. He thinks about what led him here, the mission that resulted in his capture, the hours long interrogation and then the order that he was to be killed. A few days ago he had left his apartment and gone in to Headquarters, and sat with Napoleon and Waverly at the round table for their briefing. Everything had been normal. Napoleon will be looking for him, if Napoleon is safe. He’ll look everywhere. Maybe in a few hours or a few days that door will burst open, and it will be Napoleon standing there, gun in hand, ready to get him out. He only needs to wait a few days...

He falls asleep without realising it. He dreams that he is dragged into a white brick room by a man, and lifted up, and bundled into a chest freezer. The cold seeps into his bones. The air starts to run out. He lifts his arms and pushes and pushes at the lid of the freezer, but he can’t make it lift up. He scrapes at it until his nails are torn, but he can’t lift the lid. He’s getting colder and colder, his eyes drifting closed, his mind closing down. Then his captor is standing there with a circular saw, bringing it down on his body, ready to cut it into pieces. He opens his mouth, and screams and screams.

He wakes screaming into the pitch dark, trying to flail, but the chains yank his limbs back. It’s cold all around him, and for a moment he can’t escape the feeling of being in that freezer, being frozen to death. He gasps and screams and struggles, but he can’t get free. Wakefulness starts to seep back into his mind, and he understands where he is. He carries on screaming, as loud as he can, because maybe someone will hear him. Maybe someone will find him and get him out.

No one comes, not even to threaten him and tell him to be quiet. In the end he can’t scream any more. His throat rasps. He needs water, but he can’t have water. He needs the toilet, but he’s chained to the bed. He lies there, trying to catch his breath, trying to calm himself, and there is pain through all of his body, centred between his legs. He feels so filthy. He is so alone.

He lies there, trying to calm himself. He tries to breathe slowly and deeply. He’s been in terrible situations before, and managed to get out. He needs to get out of this one.

He starts feeling the headboard, testing the rail to which his wrists are chained. He searches for any weakness in the welding, but there is none. He runs his fingers over the padlocks, but there’s no way to force them. He crunches himself up, using all his strength to pull at the chains, hands and feet, trying to force the metal to give way. The bed creaks and groans, but the metal doesn’t give. He just leaves himself with bruised wrists and ankles, bruises on bruises.

He lies there, trying to relax again. He stares into the darkness, remembering the ceiling above him, the joists with their hooks. He visualises the room as he has seen it in the light. The painted walls, the paint yellowing and peeling from the bricks. The footworn red-brick floor. The mean little sink in the corner, of chipped ceramic, and the dirty pipes that lead to it. The single light bulb hanging from the dirty, twisted flex. He thinks of the hooks in the beams and the combinations of ways his ankle chains could be hooked to them, manipulating his body into different positions. Then the shame and disgust crawls over him again, and it seems that all he can feel is the creeping of the skin of his balls under the cool air, the hot pain in his rectum, the dirty feeling of semen that has seeped from him after he was left for the night. He had got hard for those men. They had made him come. What did it mean that they made him come?

He closes his eyes, and cries.

He dreams of that chest freezer again, and the hiss of the furnace. He dreams of men coming into the room and touching him all over, masturbating him to hardness, making him orgasm. He dreams of the pain of their forced entries, and wakes screaming again, jerking at the chains, trying to get free.

After a while his sleep is long and dreamless. Perhaps he was just so tired that his mind gave up. He sleeps and sleeps, and then he wakes, stomach grinding with hunger, mouth parched with thirst. He has slept enough, and he lies there in the darkness, feeling time inch by. He hears noises upstairs, feet on the floor. It must be daytime. There are people moving around and talking. Then he hears footsteps coming closer, and the light blazes on, and the door opens.

He’s caught between relief and terror when his captor comes in. The man is alone. There is no paying guest with him. He’s holding a paper bag in one hand, and an old mug. He stands there and regards Illya, and he feels all his skin crawl.

‘Let me go,’ he says, pleading. He doesn’t know what else to say.

His captor smiles. _Lee_ , he remembers. The other man had called him Lee.

‘I made a hundred bucks off you last night, buddy,’ he says. ‘Not going to reach those heights again, not now you’re used, but I’m not letting you go.’

Illya closes his eyes briefly, but a memory of rape flashes over him, and he opens them again and lets reality steady him.

‘Let me use the toilet,’ he says. ‘Please. I need to use the toilet.’

‘Later,’ Lee says.

He goes to the sink in the corner and runs water into the mug. He comes over and holds it close to Illya’s lips. He tries to raise his head, and manages to drink, but some of the water runs down his face and neck and soaks into the mattress. He needs the toilet so badly he doesn’t want to drink, but he’s so thirsty he can’t help it.

Lee opens up the paper bag and pulls out a half-eaten bread roll. He drops it onto the mattress next to Illya’s head, and unloops the chains from the corners of the headboard, so that his hands aren’t free, but can move along the rail at least. He turns to go.

‘Please,’ Illya says again. ‘Let me use the toilet.’

Lee looks at him, and laughs. ‘An U.N.C.L.E. agent. Huh. What a sight.’

He leaves the room, and the light snaps off. That partly eaten roll is on the bed next to his face. He can smell it in the darkness. He turns his head and tries to get it closer to his mouth. He manages to hunch his shoulder somewhat, pressing the food closer. He gets it in his teeth, and by pulling his hands as close as possible and tilting his head back and pulling himself as far as he can up the bed, he can use the tips of his fingers to hold the bread against his mouth as he eats. It’s an awkward position, and hard to swallow, but he manages in the end to eat most of the food. He wishes he could drink again, but he’s in the dark, and alone, and there’s nothing he can do but wait.

 

((O))

 

Later, after a long, dark, empty drift of time, someone comes again. It’s Lee again, gun in hand. By now his bladder is so full it’s unbearable. He’s considered just letting go on the bed, but he’s afraid of what will happen if he does.

Lee has keys in his hand, and he unclips Illya’s ankles and then unlocks the padlocks fixing the wrist chains to the bed, and stands back. He holds the gun on Illya, and nods towards the bucket in the corner, saying, ‘There’s your toilet. Use it. I want to see you empty yourself out.’

Illya lowers his wrists from above his head, his hands tingling fiercely as blood runs back in. He brings his legs together and looks down his body, and feels sick. He looks at the bucket, and Lee jerks his gun.

‘You can use it, or I can beat you,’ he says. ‘I want you ready for tonight.’

He feels sick at the thought of that. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, and the chains clatter on the brick floor. It’s cold under his bare feet. He crosses the room to the bucket and squats down on the hard edge. He presses his hands over his face, at first unable to feel anything but the incredible relief as his bladder lets go. It’s so good to feel the pressure release. Then he just squats there, hands still over his face, trying to work out how to use this moment. He should be able to use this moment to get away.

He drops his hands and looks up. Lee is canny. He’s standing right over by the door, gun raised, far out of range of anything Illya could do. If he made any movement, the gun would fire before he could reach his captor. So he focusses on what he can do. He’s been told to use the bucket, like a dog being told to ‘make’ in the park. He doesn’t want to make his bowels move. He’s afraid of what will happen, after the bleeding of yesterday. But he’s full, and he’s been holding it for so long. This is his only chance. He squats there, and tries not to see Lee watching him, and lets go.

It hurts. He closes his eyes, biting his lip, feeling the solidity leaving his body and trying not to think of what had entered there yesterday. It hurts and hurts, and the smell rises around him, a steaming warmth in the cold room. There’s a toilet roll next to the bucket, a small luxury, and when he’s finished, he uses it.

‘Wash yourself off too,’ Lee says, nodding towards the sink, and the damp cloth in the corner. ‘I want you presentable.’

He feels so sick. He can’t bear the thought of what’s going to happen to him later. But he uses the cloth, that gun pointing at him. It hurts to wipe himself. Then Lee tells him to get back on the bed. He makes him clip his own ankle chains to the footboard, and lie back with his hands above his head. He makes him close the padlock about one of the wrist chains, then comes closer to fix the second.

Illya acts, striking out with his single free hand, whipping the chain at Lee’s head. If he can only incapacitate him, he’ll be able to get the keys. But Lee catches his hand and slams it down onto the bed, and kneels one knee onto Illya’s chest as he refastens that wrist. Illya wheezes in breath until the weight moves away, and then Lee slaps him across the face hard enough to make his ears ring. His head aches so much from the slapping.

‘Don’t be a fucking moron,’ Lee says in a low, hard voice.

He turns his attention to the wrist that Illya fastened, jerking the chain shorter and locking it like that. He hooks the wrist chains over the corners of the headboard, so he can’t slide his hands closer together. He checks the ankle chains to be sure they’re properly fastened.

‘You’ve got work to do tonight,’ he says nastily. ‘So I’d rest up, if I were you.’

He takes the bucket away, but the room smells of shit for a long time.

 

((O))

 

He’s left in darkness again, with no sense of time. He lies there on the bed, at times dull with boredom, at times so much in dread of what will happen tonight that he feels sick. He drifts into sleep again, and out. Dreams come and go. Then someone comes into the room with an electric heater, and plugs it in. The bars heat up slowly to red. The same man gives him water and holds more scraps of food for him to eat. He feels grateful that the man stands there, holding the food and putting it into his mouth, and lets him drink again when he’s finished. Then he leaves, turning off the light.

The two bars of the fire make two dull red lines on the other side of the room. It takes a while for the heat to crawl across the chill space, but eventually he feels it. He lies there, watching that warmth, and wonders if the sight of it makes him feel warmer still. Perhaps the level of warmth is an illusion. He closes his eyes, but he can still feel that the air is warmer. He opens them again, and sees the dull shadows and soft red; the contours of the bricks, the lines of the ceramic sink, the bucket that has been replaced on the floor. It’s an odd light, like being in a photographic dark room. It’s more like imagining than really seeing.

Perhaps an hour has passed when he starts to hear the music from above, and the feet trooping in. His gullet constricts. They’ll be coming down to him soon. His bladder is uncomfortably full again, and he’s still in pain, and he can’t bear the thought of going through all of that again. The fear grows in him, until he can’t lie still any more. He pulls desperately at the chains, knowing it won’t help, but needing to move.

Then the light comes on, and Lee is entering the room, a man just behind him. The man is dressed in a suit. He looks like a businessman just come from the office. As the door opens the music from upstairs grows a little louder, and then softens again as the door is closed.

‘Half an hour,’ Lee tells him. ‘He’s new at this but he didn’t disappoint last night.’

‘Good looking,’ the other man murmurs, his voice low, as if he’s almost unsure. He pulls out his wallet and takes out some notes. ‘Five?’

‘Five,’ Lee says, and takes the money.

When they’re left alone, the man seems hesitant at first. Maybe he can use this. Maybe Illya can somehow persuade him.

‘Listen,’ he says softly. ‘I’m an U.N.C.L.E. agent. Please, let me out of here.’

The man’s eyes slip over him. He must look terrible, bruised and naked and shivering. The man sees the padlocks, and Illya glances at them too. Of course there’s no way he can open them.

‘Please,’ he says. ‘Just tell someone. The police, U.N.C.L.E. Tell someone.’

‘Shut up,’ the man says, then repeats louder, suddenly angry, ‘Shut up, you son of a bitch. Just shut up.’

‘Please,’ Illya tries again. ‘The police...’

The man comes across the room in a fury. He unclips one of Illya’s legs and jerks it back so quickly he doesn’t have time to react, clipping the chain to the chain about his wrist. The long muscle at the back of his thigh aches, until the man takes the other leg and pulls it back too, clipping it in the same way, so his torso is curled up, the weight of his legs pulling from the wrist chains. The man makes a little sound of need, a kind of groan, looking hungrily at Illya’s splayed buttocks and what is between.

He opens his trousers and starts to masturbate, touching Illya with his other hand, stroking down the long backs of his thighs, manipulating his cock and balls under his palm. He groans again, murmuring something that Illya can’t catch, caught up in lust. He takes a little bottle from his pocket and Illya feels a terrible relief, because it’s some kind of oil. It will make it easier. He doesn’t want another cock inside him, but it will make it easier.

Despite the oil, it feels like a rod of wood entering him. He’s bruised and sore, and as the man pushes in Illya gives a little sob.

‘Shut up,’ the man tells him furiously again. ‘You enjoy this. I want you to make sounds like you enjoy this.’

‘I – can’t,’ Illya grits through clenched teeth. He can’t possibly pretend to enjoy this. He can’t bear this. He wants to disappear. He wants to not exist. ‘Please,’ he says.

His mind is clouded, his words momentarily taken as the cock pulls out and pushes in again, pressing against his prostate, sending the dizzying feeling that he doesn’t want to feel through his body.

He gasps aloud, and the man murmurs, ‘That’s it, baby. That’s what I want to hear from you.’

His own cock is thickening. It can’t happen again. He can’t bear the thought of it happening again, of his body coming during this awful assault. He closes his eyes and tries to divorce himself from the feeling, but there’s no getting away from it. It’s right there, right in the centre of him, awful pain mingling with that warm, spreading feeling.

He presses his lips together, and he couldn’t say if the sounds he makes sound like pain or pleasure to the man assaulting him. He can’t help but make those noises. He’s dizzy with the bruised, twisting pain and the spreading warmth radiating from the same place. He feels as if he’s going to lose control of his bladder. He’s so afraid he’s going to lose control. He thinks he’s urinating over himself, but when he opens his eyes he sees cum pooled on his chest, and the man is still there, plunging into him, eyes closed, groaning his gratification.

He closes his eyes again, lets himself sink away. The movements get faster, and then the man is coming inside him, arms wrapped about his thighs. He stills, and Illya lies with his eyes closed still, until the cock inside him is soft enough that his muscles push it out, followed by that awful trickle.

‘I told you you’d enjoy it,’ the man says, the grip of his arms softening around Illya’s thighs. ‘You liked that in the end, didn’t you? I can see you liked it.’

He feels something swelling in his throat. He’s about to cry. He can’t trust himself to speak. He wants to scream at the man, _No. No, I could never enjoy it. No, I hated every moment,_ but he can’t trust himself to speak, because he’ll cry in front of him. Anyway, there’s the little pool of cum on his chest again, and his mind is dizzy. How can he defend how much he hated it when, yet again, he was forced to orgasm?

‘Yeah, you liked it,’ the man tells him, his voice weirdly soft. ‘I’m glad you liked it, baby. I’m going to come see you again.’

He closes his eyes and turns his head away. He feels the man moving off the bed, and hears the tap run. Then, for a few minutes, he is left alone again.

He gasps in air so sharply it hurts. He can’t let himself cry. He blinks tears from his eyes and tries to look at where his ankle chains are clipped to the wrist chains. He tries to move his hands to release the clips, but he can’t reach. It doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t be able to free his hands, anyway.

 

((O))

 

After the last client has left, the two bar heater is turned off. Cold creeps into the room again. He is wretched and hungry and shivering, and so, so tired. His limbs shake as if he had a fever. His muscles ache and he is so sore.

He has learnt through the evening that his price has dropped to five dollars. Five dollars for half an hour of pleasure. There are a lot of half hours in an evening, and a man can do a lot in that time, but it’s like striking a line onto the wall each time. In that way, he has some count of the hours. He doesn’t know when the club opened that evening, but it didn’t close its doors until six hours later. He has made sixty dollars for his captor, and he is so exhausted he can barely think. Instead of thinking, finally, he cries.

There’s no one to hear, no one to feel ashamed in front of. There’s no one at all. But he still cries quietly, as men are taught to do, ashamed to hear himself. His sobs are little breathy gasps. His situation is utterly miserable, and he wants Napoleon or anyone who would help him to come in through that door and set him free. He doesn’t care who it might be, who might see him like this. He just wants someone to come and set him free.

He has endured two nights of this. He can’t bear to think of how many nights there might be to come. He lies there, feeling the mattress beneath him, and wondering if there were someone else lying on this bed a week ago. Had they had someone else captive, that they had worn out and killed and disposed of in the furnace? He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but a terrible thrill runs through him, a shivering that works right up his spine. It’s so dark in here, and so cold, and he feels as if he’s lying in here with another man, another unfortunate soul who was brought here and fucked into death. He thinks of that chest freezer, and the fear balloons.

He jerks at the wrist chains, but his wrists are so bruised from pulling and pulling at them, and he stops quickly. He wants to wipe the chill tears from his face but Lee has hooked his wrists over the corners of the headboard again, and he can’t get them free enough to draw his hands in towards his face. He lies there and feels the tears slowly dry, leaving his skin tight where they have run down into the mattress. He feels the shiver of cold moving across his body again. He is so aware of his genitals, of the aching and the hot, twisting pain in his rectum. There’s no time to recover between men, and the eighteen hours or so of lying here alone isn’t long enough to recover after an evening of rape.

He’s tired, and little waves of warmth come over him, a warmth that is just in his eyes and in his mind. His body is cold, but he finds himself sinking into those little pockets of warmth, finding his thoughts have wandered and started to melt into dreams. Then he kicks suddenly, feeling as if he’s falling, and the chain jerks his ankle back, and he’s awake again, staring into the blackness.

If only he could turn on the heater with his mind. There’s a comfort not just in the warmth, but in the soft red light of those bars. For a moment he concentrates, but of course it’s impossible. If he could move things with his mind he wouldn’t still be here. He would have moved the tumblers in the padlocks, and he would be free.

He’s dropping again, but this time he doesn’t kick. He doesn’t wake up. He’s in some building, in some imagined version of this club. Everything has fallen apart. He knows U.N.C.L.E. is gone, and there are only his enemies. Their hands are hard on his arms, and he’s naked, and they’re walking him across an empty room. He’s on a bed, a mattress striped in black and white ticking. He’s not chained, but he can’t get up. There’s a man on him, heavy, meaty and solid, his skin moist with sweat. His lips are on Illya’s, pressing, and he doesn’t want to kiss him. He doesn’t want to touch him at all, and he shakes his head from side to side, trying to escape the lips. But he’s sluggish, as if his muscles have lost all their strength. When he tries to move he just makes feeble motions, and his limbs drop back to the mattress. That man is on him, and he can feel the itch of his bush against his own. He can feel the hard heat of his cock. He doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to do this, but there’s nothing he can do. The man is kissing him, then he’s lifting up his unresisting thighs, pressing them apart with his hands, putting his cock to the sore opening between. Illya cries, because he can’t, he doesn’t want to, he wants to get away from this, to somehow get to safety. The man is so heavy over him he can hardly breathe, and he fights for air. He fights to scream, trying to get sound out of his mouth as that awful hardness enters him.

He is awake, trying to scream, the sound catching in his throat. His rectum hurts. It’s still pitch dark, and he has no idea if it’s night or day, how long he’s been asleep, how soon he might be allowed to eat or use the bucket in the corner. He needs to use that bucket, and his mouth is dry with thirst. His heart is thudding inside his ribs.

He lies there, watching the darkness, feeling the motion of his skin as his scant body hair tries to keep him warm. It could be the middle of the night, early morning, midday. Unless he hears sound from above, or someone comes in here, he can’t tell. The only way to pass the time is to sleep, and he’s still tired, so he tries to fall asleep again. It’s hard when you’re cold.

It must have happened, eventually, because he’s dreaming again. He’s in his bed at home, but he can’t get the blanket to come over him. He tries to pull it over him, but it’s as if it’s too small, because no matter how much he pulls a large part of him is exposed, and he’s cold. Someone comes to lie alongside him, and he presses closer to them, hoping to share some of their warmth. He doesn’t feel any warmer, though. The person is lying there, stroking his flank. He leans against them, basking in the touch, but there’s no warmth in the hand. Then the hand moves over him, coming down between his legs, touching his cock. He freezes. It had been nice, just being stroked, but he doesn’t want to be touched there. The hand is stroking his cock, and he is hardening, but he doesn’t want to be touched there. He doesn’t know what to feel, because he’s getting so hard it’s difficult to bear. He moves his hips and the hand grips around him, but he doesn’t know if he’s thrusting into the hand or trying to pull away. Lips whisper near his ear, and he recognises Lee’s voice. He’s horrified, and he needs to get away. God. He needs to get away. He –

He opens his eyes to light. Lee is standing there in the room, laughing. He can feel that he’s hard. He looks, and sees his cock standing up, and Lee standing there, just watching him, laughing. He wants to scream swearwords at him.

‘Fuck,’ he says incoherently, pulling at the chains. Blood roars into his hands, and pins and needles explode. He’s still half asleep and he can’t muster his English. ‘Fuck – away. Мне бы хотелось – ’

‘I forget you’re a Soviet,’ Lee says musingly. ‘I forget your name, to be honest. It’s not important any more.’

Illya closes his eyes. He needs the toilet so badly it hurts. He will need to beg.

‘Please, let me use the toilet,’ he says.

‘Like that?’ Lee asks with a laugh, nodding towards the hard length of his cock. ‘Good luck.’

He comes across the room and puts his hand on Illya’s cock. Illya jerks himself away, but the hand follows. Lee sits down lightly on the mattress and closes his hand around Illya’s cock again, stroking it firmly in the tunnel he has made. He touches Illya’s balls with his other hand, stroking fingertips over the ridged skin, watching how it moves.

‘You need some training,’ he says. ‘You need to learn to give pleasure in different ways. You’re not just an asshole to be fucked.’

Illya closes his eyes, but he remembers the dream. It was Lee in the dream. Now he’s here, his hands touching Illya intimately. He tries to shake off his hands, but it’s no use.

‘You’re going to get men who want to fuck you in the mouth,’ Lee says. ‘You’re going to get men who want to jerk you off, and men who want to ride you. Maybe all those things at once. How do you like the sound of that, huh? One guy fucking you in the mouth, another riding your cock, and another one fucking you in the ass? That’ll be fifteen dollars in my pocket, for one half hour. The more I get in at the same time, the more money I make.’

He feels sick. ‘Get off me,’ he growls. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘I _own_ you, and I will touch you whenever I like. Now, here,’ Lee says, slipping his fingers down to Illya’s flat perineum. He begins to massage, and those terrible feelings of arousal shiver through Illya’s body. Lee is moving his fingers in time with his hands on Illya’s cock. ‘I want you to come for me now. We’ll call this a training session. You’re going to come for me. If you do well, I’ll let you use the bucket, and I’ll give you something to eat and drink.’

The last two nights’ memories surge over him like a wave. There’s been so much of this. So many men have touched him in a way no one has ever been allowed to touch him. Lee’s hand is still moving. The pressure in his bladder is so bad it hurts. He closes his eyes, because he can’t do anything. He tries to divorce himself from the feeling of Lee’s hand. It’s stroking so firmly. Lee’s fingers keep moving on his perineum, conjuring a weaker version of the awful flooding feeling that comes when a man’s cock presses over his prostate. He tries not to be here, to be something apart from his body, but when the orgasm comes he has no choice but to be terribly in the present. He grits out a gasp through his teeth, and cum spatters on his chest.

‘Not exactly a mother lode,’ Lee says critically, wiping him down. He goes and gets the bucket, and pushes the metal rim down against Illya’s groin, flicking his now-limp cock over the edge. ‘You can use the bucket now.’

He doesn’t know how to speak at all. It’s awful enough crouching in the corner over that bucket, but lying here like this is worse. The rim is so cold against his skin, and he feels so ashamed at what has just happened. He feels so ashamed at being brought to this.

‘Use it, or I’ll take it away,’ Lee tells him.

He lets go. Urine streams into the bucket, and steam rises. Then Lee takes the bucket away, and says, ‘If you want breakfast, you need to pass another lesson.’

His stomach is so empty that it hurts. He hasn’t eaten more than a few pieces of bread in the past two days. He wants food, but he feels sick at the thought of how he might be required to pay. He can see a bag of something on the edge of the sink. Maybe that’s his food, and there’s a little grease darkening the paper. He needs the food so much.

‘You’re going to learn to give head,’ Lee tells him. He’s opened the button on his trousers. He’s putting his hand inside, rubbing himself.

‘If you put that in my mouth I will rip it apart,’ Illya promises.

Lee laughs, but suddenly he is moving, swift and violent. He clenches his fist and dashes it across Illya’s face, smashing into his jaw. Then he picks something up – Illya’s tie, he sees, that must have been on the floor. He loops it around his neck, making a choking halter and yanking him up off the bed, his fist clenched so hard on the fabric that his knuckles are white. Illya’s arms are stretched back behind him, pulling at the chains, and he chokes.

‘If you _ever_ do anything like that I will break your jaw,’ Lee hisses, his face only an inch from Illya’s. ‘I will get a hammer and I will break your jaw on both sides of your mouth, and then we’ll see how you bite. I will pull your teeth out with pliers, and then we’ll see how you bite.’

He lets go of the tie, and Illya slumps back down onto the bed, his head striking the metal rail as he falls. The pain stings through him. He is choking, and the tie is still tight around his neck, but Lee doesn’t loosen it. He kneels over Illya’s chest, sitting down on him, loosening his cock from his clothes and rubbing it to hardness. He sits there for a moment, just letting the tip touch Illya’s lips. He can smell the scent of it, and he tries to turn his head away.

Lee slaps him, slapping on top of the bruising he already has. It rings through his head.

‘Put your mouth back there,’ he says. ‘Open your mouth, put out your tongue, and take me in.’

He keeps his lips tightly closed. He can’t do this. He just can’t.

‘Open – your – mouth,’ Lee says, and he puts his hands on the tie, pulling it a little tighter. ‘Do you want me to get that hammer?’

He has learnt a lot about pain in his years with the U.N.C.L.E.. He has learnt that some people have no limits on what they will do to a person within their power, and that sometimes all you can do is try to avoid the worst of it. He opens his mouth.

‘Good,’ Lee says. ‘Now put your tongue out. Come on.’

Slowly, he sticks out his tongue. The dry, circumcised cock head bobs down onto it, and he recoils at that sharp, salty taste. Lee hasn’t washed.

‘Put out your tongue,’ Lee says again, jerking at the tie around his neck. ‘Welcome me in. Caress it for me, like you’re eating a popsicle.’

He moves his tongue over the soft, spongy head. The taste fills his mouth. Lee moves a little, forcing Illya’s tongue to move over the slit, and the salt taste of pre-come makes him jerk away again.

‘All over,’ Lee warns him. ‘Make it feel good.’

He moves his tongue over the contours, around the rim. Lee groans, lifting his cock up so Illya can lick down the underneath. His tongue is moving down the length when the awfulness of it pounds through him again, and he closes his mouth and turns his head away.

Lee slaps him again, then puts his hands on both sides of Illya’s head, fingers knotted into his hair. He pulls Illya’s head forwards.

‘Open your mouth again, and put out your tongue,’ he says.

When Illya obeys, he leans himself into his mouth. Illya chokes as the solid heat fills him. He chokes at the taste, turning his head to avoid the feeling of the length touching the back of his throat.

‘Not in your cheek, in your throat,’ Lee says relentlessly. ‘I’m going all the way in. Forget about gagging. You’re giving a man pleasure. That’s the only reason you’re here. Open up your throat and let me in.’

He thrusts forward, right into Illya’s throat again, and he chokes. Lee slaps the side of his head, then takes hold of his hair again.

‘Use your tongue,’ he says. ‘Use your cheeks. Suck my fucking cock.’

He can’t talk. He can’t say anything. Lee has his head pulled up, his cock plunged so deeply into his throat that his stomach is lurching.

‘Suck,’ Lee tells him, pulling his head forward, pushing it back a little, pulling forward again. ‘No teeth. Just tongue and cheeks. You let me fuck your throat, and you make it feel good, or there won’t be any food today. There will just be pain. Do you understand?’

There are tears running from his eyes. He feels as if he can’t breathe. He tries to pull in his cheeks, to move his tongue. He hates himself, but he tries to do it, because he’s afraid of what will happen if he doesn’t. He has no power here. There’s nothing he can do.

Lee keeps pushing in, pushing as far in as he can, until wiry hair is pressed against Illya’s lips. Illya coughs and chokes but the cock stays in his mouth, and those hands keep jerking his head forward. He keeps pressing in, over and over, and the head of his cock is hitting the back of Illya’s throat, bruising it, making his stomach lurch. Lee is starting to lose himself, thinking of no more than ramming into that hot space. Illya tries to keep his teeth away from the man’s skin and tries to move his tongue, and his jaw aches so much he can hardly stop it from cramping shut. Lee keeps thrusting so deep into his throat that his stomach is flipping over. Then he stills, and cum floods Illya’s mouth, bitter and desiccating. It trickles down his open throat. His stomach jumps, and he coughs around the cock. All of a sudden, he is vomiting, and Lee is jolting back, then raining down a storm of blows about his head as Illya vomits over his own chest.

When he has stopped, Lee wipes the mess away with water from the sink, and Illya lies there, shivering and wretched.

‘We will repeat this every morning until you can do it right,’ Lee says in a low voice. ‘If you swallow it nicely tomorrow, you can have some food to go with it.’

He takes the bag of food with him when he leaves the room, and Illya is in darkness again. There is blood, he thinks, running down his throat from the back of his nose. His head throbs. His mouth tastes of vomit and cum, and he wants so desperately to swill water and spit. He wants to be free.

 

((O))

 

The days become a soup. He doesn’t know how much time has passed or which day is which. At first he managed to keep count, but day has blended into day. He lies on the bed in the darkness. For a while Lee came in every morning to train him, and his food depended on his performance, but when he became passive enough, that stopped, and the morning visitations became sporadic. Now sometimes the light comes on in what must be the morning, and someone feeds him, and lets him urinate into the bucket as he lies on the bed. Sometimes he’s given a laxative, if he hasn’t managed to move his bowels the day before. Sometimes no one comes in at all. Some days he just drifts in and out, hearing noises coming from above, but no one comes downstairs for the long, long hours between the night before and the next evening’s routine.

Every day someone comes in a little before the club opens. The man unchains him and makes him sit on the bucket and empty his bowels. Then he makes him lie down again and clip the first three chains back into place, then comes forward to finish the job. Usually, then, he feeds him and lets him drink. In this cold weather, he turns the heater on, then leaves him in that dim red glow, until the music starts upstairs, feet start coming down into this cellar, and the first client of the evening comes in.

He is so exhausted by the nightly traffic. Often they come one by one, but sometimes they come in groups, drunk, laughing, playing up to one another. They unleash their depravity on him. They smoke and stub out their cigarettes on his skin. They pinch him and strike him, urinate on him, into his mouth. They paw him and kiss him, push their cocks into his mouth, into his rectum, and fuck him until they come. He is so tired and so numb that he often doesn’t react any more, unless they provoke severe pain. Lee tries to pretend that he is feisty and dangerous, but he is just tired and broken.

He lies there under another heaving body, gasping at each thrust because each thrust hurts. When he gasps they think they’re doing well, so he can gasp his pain and perhaps gain a little favour as he massages the man’s ego. His eyes are on the ceiling, unfocussed. His head keeps hitting into the metal rails of the headboard, and he tries to move a little down the bed. That pushes him closer towards the man fucking him, and he is gratified, and murmurs, ‘Yeah, baby. That’s it. You like this, don’t you? You gonna come for me, huh?’

He isn’t even hard. For a long time he couldn’t help the erections. He even tried, sometimes, under the threat of harm. Men plunged their mouths down over him and sucked him to orgasm. They slathered him in lubricant that they wouldn’t spare when they fucked him, and slipped themselves down onto him, riding him until he came inside their heat. But something merciful has happened, and he can’t get hard any more. Even with those awful presses over his prostate he’s not getting hard. He hasn’t been hard in days, and Lee has come in screaming at him to work harder, to please his customers. But he can’t. He can’t make himself hard. Even if he tries to, with the fear of pain and punishment, he can’t get hard. It doesn’t seem surprising that impotence would come over him in a situation like this.

The man butts and butts, and orgasms with a groan. He puts a hand on Illya’s chest, stroking him lightly, leaning against his upraised thigh. He lights a cigarette, and the smoke fills the air. Illya turns his head sideways, and coughs. He hates the stench of cigarettes, but they scare him too. His skin is dotted with marks where sadistic customers have burnt him with their cigarettes. His right hand sears whenever he curls his fingers because a few nights ago one of the men smoked the whole time, and put the stubs out in the palm of his hand. Those tiny burns hurt so much.

The man pulls out and fastens his clothing, but he still has some of his half hour left, and he doesn’t leave. He comes to sit on the edge of the bed, by Illya’s side, and strokes his hand over his chest. There is a bruise spreading over his ribs, and the man’s finger circles it, pressing just a little. Then he strokes the short fuzz of beard on Illya’s face, then leans down to kiss him, his mouth stinking of smoke. Illya opens his lips automatically, and the tongue comes in to probe around his mouth. The man kisses him for a while, then draws away, and moves the cigarette towards his face. He flinches, and the man laughs, turning it around and slipping it between Illya’s lips.

‘You want a drag, huh? Nothing better than a good smoke after a good fuck.’

He tries not to breathe in. He can’t bear the smell. Suddenly angry, the man presses one hand up under his chin and pinches his nose.

‘You take a drag, boy. Be nice.’

He breathes in, and the hot, filthy taste swells into his lungs. He feels sick. He has to not be sick. Lee will beat him if he’s sick.

The single inhalation was enough. The man takes the cigarette back and drags on it himself. He strokes Illya’s cheek then looks at his watch, and stands up.

‘Guess my time’s up. I’m gonna come back and see you again, though.’

Illya has turned off. He doesn’t need to give the man any more. He just lies there with his eyes on the ceiling, his legs still hitched up and shaking, cum pooling where it has seeped from his body. He’s trying to work out what time it is. This might be the last one of the night. It feels as if it’s been such a long night. Everything around him seems to be expanding and contracting. He doesn’t feel as if he’s in his body. He’s floating somewhere, twisting and turning, far away from everything. His mind feels white.

Lee is in the room, tidying him up, letting his legs down and fixing them back to the foot of the bed. He’s talking, and Illya isn’t listening. The heater clicks off, so he knows that was the last one. He realises gradually that the music upstairs has gone silent, and the cold is creeping back. Then the light is off and the door is closed. For a minute he can see the last red glow of the fire’s bars, until they fade to meet the darkness. He doesn’t feel as if he’s lying in darkness. He feels as if he’s in white, spinning around, outside his body, outside everything. It doesn’t matter that it’s dark, because he has no eyes.

A flash. He’s lying on the bed, and there are four men in the room, all jostling about him, making lewd remarks, vying for who gets to do what. They manhandle him as if he’s meat. They manage to twist him over, his arms strained and twisted by the chains. One of them is under him, another over him, and they’re both pushing into his rectum at the same time. They’re using some kind of lubrication, but they’re both pushing into him at once, while the other two urge them on with low, animal noises. He feels as if he’s going to break in two. Tears run from his eyes. He can’t take this. He’s going to be ripped apart. But they keep on, driven to frenzy by his sounds of pain, fucking themselves into him until they are spent. When they are finished, the other two take their place, and he lies there, sobbing, terrified that they will damage him beyond repair.

He feels as if he’s fallen, slamming back onto the dirty mattress, into the dark and cold. Then he’s slowly spinning again, the white emptiness expanding again to push away the terrible feelings. Perhaps this is what it feels like to die. Just a nothing, an empty spinning, where nothing matters at all. If only they could leave the light off forever, just leave him alone in here to fade away. He feels ready to just fade away.

‘Life.’

He hears Napoleon’s voice as clearly as if he were standing in the room. He doesn’t say anything else. There’s just that one word. He doesn’t know what he means. He’s just heard that word, ringing into the silence, then echoing into nothing.

Tears come. The whiteness was a relief. It wasn’t good or bad, a comfort or a torment. It was just nothing, and nothing is such a relief. But now there are tears, and all his pain floods through him. It’s too much to bear. He sobs loudly enough that the sound throbs from the hard walls and floor. He pours a torrent of grief into the night. When it finally stops, nothing has changed. He’s still chained here. It’s still dark. His hair is still an itching mat of grease. His body still aches and throbs with pain. Nothing has changed.

 

((O))

 

He’s so tired of darkness. So much of his time is in darkness, and his sleep has become so strange. He’s not sure he knows what the night is any more. He doesn’t sleep through the night. He wakes and sleeps and wakes and sleeps for hours on end, stretching his sleep out into a ragged patchwork that lasts for as long as possible just to pass the time. Spiders walk over him, and dust falls from the ceiling. Sometimes a fly ends up in the room, and buzzes around, landing on him, then flying away again. When he’s asleep he is plagued with nightmares, and when he is awake his thoughts churn and drift and torment him, and there is never any escape. He thinks he can be sure of when evening is, because that’s when the club is open, but sometimes that certainty drops away as well. Maybe it’s not open in the evening. Maybe it’s open in the day. Maybe his whole way of understanding the rhythm of the days is wrong, and he doesn’t even know when night is.

He thinks the seasons must be changing, because they don’t put the heater on as much any more. It’s still cold, but they must judge it, sometimes, not cold enough to put off the customers. So he doesn’t even get the comfort of watching those red bars for an hour or so before the customers come, and he doesn’t get the comfort of the warmth. So maybe it’s spring now, outside. He tries to think about that. He thinks about trees in the streets starting to put out leaves. He thinks about a blue sky with shreds of white clouds. He thinks about the sun, and warmth.

He feels himself spiralling out of control again. He hasn’t seen trees or sky or sun for so long. He hasn’t breathed a breath of air that doesn’t smell of mould and urine. Those scents are normality to him now, and the ceiling with the undersides of floorboards and the stretching joists is his sky. He’ll never see the sky again, of course, because he’s going to die here. Today – tonight? – there’s a dank heaviness in his lungs and it hurts when he breathes, and his nose is stuffed up. His head aches fiercely. It won’t stop them fucking him tonight. It didn’t stop them fucking him yesterday. They don’t care if he feels ill because they don’t care about him at all.

He tries to think about a spring sky, and birds flying. There would be aeroplane trails marking the sky, of course. People would be going out without their coats for the first time. There would be kids playing in the parks. There might be carts selling food, warm food, tasteful and fresh. But he doesn’t know if it’s day or night. Should he be imagining blue sky, or dark? Are the people going up to the carts to buy a daytime snack, or something to eat on their walk home from a night out?

His stomach twists. His diet mostly consists of old bread. Once there was a slice of cold pizza, but mostly it’s bits of bread, stale crusts, half-eaten rolls. When it’s light and he looks down on his body he can see how thin he has become. He can lie there and count his ribs. He feels a sudden furious, weeping anger at the thought of carefree children, playing in the park, going up to one of those food carts and getting something to eat. It’s so unfair that they are allowed to eat.

They will be eating at Headquarters, of course. Agents will be sitting in the Commissary, ordering lunch or dinner, maybe breakfast. He has no idea what time of day it is. They’ll be there in their fresh suits, talking, laughing, drinking hot drinks. He hates all of them. He hates them for going about their lives and leaving him here like this. Where is Napoleon? He has been here for so long, and Napoleon must have given up on him by now. There is no hope that he will ever be set free.

He breathes in, and coughs, and his lungs burn. He thinks about what will happen later, and he starts to cry. Couldn’t they leave him alone, just for one night? Couldn’t they let him just lie here? He doesn’t know how soon they’ll be coming.

His bowels churn. That sparks a memory. It must be the afternoon now, because he remembers someone coming in a while ago and making him take a laxative. He hates it when they give him the laxative, because he’s so afraid of losing control on the bed. He lost control once, and he’s still recovering from the beating Lee gave him. The mattress still smells faintly of shit. He has to hold on to his bowels, to keep control until someone decides to come down and let him use the bucket, and then he has to sit there on the hard rim and let go, while they watch him and throw insults at him for how bad it smells. He has to make sure he voids himself of everything then, because if he holds back and it comes when he’s with a customer, the punishment will be terrible.

Sky. He tries to think of the spring sky. Maybe it is raining outside. He tries to remember what it feels like to have water falling on your skin. A shower… God, a shower. It would be incredible to be able to have a shower. He would be able to wash the layers and layers of filth from his skin. He would live in the shower, crouching under the warm rain.

He blinks, looking up at the blackness. The ceiling is up there, then the room above where people dance to music. Then there must be other rooms, one or two more storeys, perhaps. Then roof, and sky. It’s all so far away. He’s buried in the earth. He’s lying in a grave. He can feel the earth pressing at the walls of the room. It wants to come in and cover him over. It’s so quiet down here, and he’s so alone.

 

((O))

 

There’s a man on top of him, lying full out over him. He’s taken off all his clothes, and that’s unusual. Mostly they just loosen what they need to, and fuck him like that. But this man has stripped off all his clothes as if he’s getting into bed with his wife. He’s folded them and put them carefully in the corner, and now he’s lying full length over Illya’s body, his cock still soft and pressed against his leg. He’s kissing his collarbones, his hand stroking down Illya’s side. He’s warm against Illya’s cold skin, but he can’t bear the feeling of those lips kissing him.

The man’s hand strokes his face, and Illya automatically opens his mouth to the kiss. The tongue delves in. He tastes of garlic and coffee and cigarettes. Illya doesn’t respond, but he lets the tongue move around his mouth, while the fingers lightly stroke at the side of his head. It’s a deeper invasion, this, than when they just fuck him. He hates it when they try to make him romantically involved, as if somehow that will excuse the fact that they are raping him while he lies chained to a bed.

The man crawls all over him, caressing him and tonguing him, murmuring things to him. Illya doesn’t listen. When the man hooks his legs up he knows it’s just going to be the same, all over again. It always ends like this. It doesn’t matter if they’re tender or violent, they always end up by putting their cocks into him, mouth or ass, and fucking him. He used to try to persuade the tender ones to get word to someone, to help him get out, but none of them would help him. It was as useless as trying to avoid the blows of the ones who want to cause pain. So he doesn’t try any more. He doesn’t ask them to help him. He doesn’t turn his head away from the slaps. He just lets them use him.

He feels the cock pressing at him, and he shifts his hips to make the entry easier. His feet are dangling above him, white and bloodless. The man’s hands grip on his hips as he slides in, then his hands start to roam over Illya’s cock and balls, but he doesn’t stiffen at all. The man starts to butt, and then the tenderness is gone. All he cares about is his own pleasure, and when Illya cries out in pain he doesn’t even falter in his stroke. He just keeps pushing against him, his bare flesh slapping against Illya’s behind, leaning forward to kiss him again, pressing his tongue into his mouth. Then he is coming, panting, crying out.

When he’s finished he touches his fingers into the cum that is ejected from Illya’s body, and slips it between Illya’s lips. Illya swallows dutifully, his throat constricting and growing dry. He hates that taste, but he swallows. He’s tired and hungry, and he just does what is required of him to get through the evening. He wonders if that means he’s complicit. Is it even rape any more, if he does what is required just to get through? That thought makes him curl up inside with self-loathing. He has been asking for this all along, because he is foul and worthless, and his life has no meaning. He wouldn’t be able to survive outside of this room. He doesn’t know how to live any more.

He lies there when the man has left, waiting. Someone comes in, and he’s unresponsive as the man cleans him off and lowers his legs. He feels so tired. He tries to think of how many have been through the door this evening, but he can’t remember. Everything is becoming a blur. He lies there in exhaustion, dimly recognising that it’s quiet upstairs now. There’s nothing but a few footfalls up there. He’s hungry and thirsty, and he turns his head towards the sink.

‘May I have water?’ he asks. It’s not Lee tonight, and sometimes the others are more merciful.

The man glances at the sink and back at Illya.

‘There’s no cup,’ he says.

He leaves, and the light turns off. Illya lies there, tasting that cum in his mouth, feeling it in his throat. He can’t bear that taste. It stays with him for so long, and no matter how far away he tries to drift his mind, the taste brings him back.

 

((O))

 

He spends another night and day drifting in and out. Sometimes there are footsteps upstairs, sometimes a faint voice. No one comes for a long, long time. The thirst comes and goes in waves, searing to unbearable levels, then fading to a dull need.

He lies in the dark, staring with his eyes open until he can see things in the nothingness, then closing his eyes and trying to conjure more real images from memories. He remembers odd, insignificant little things. Putting a quart of milk into the fridge and hearing the bottles clink. Standing in his childhood apartment in Kyiv, looking through the window across the park. Walking down the corridor at HQ with Napoleon at his side. Flicking between television channels and finding nothing on. The feeling as an aeroplane accelerates to take off speed. He remembers stepping out from a plane into another country’s air, somewhere warmer than he has been, and being cloaked in the warm and scent and the sound of birdsong. All those things are so far away. He hears the clink of milk bottles in his mind again. He can’t remember if his fridge door opens to the left or the right. He can’t remember the make. He tries to see the badge on the door, but he can’t make it come.

Maybe none of that exists any more. Maybe it never existed. Maybe all of that was a dream, and he’s been lying here all his life, his back aching, the sores on the underneath of his pelvis rasping on the bare mattress, the mat of his hair pushing at the back of his head. He was never a child. He was never free. He’s just been lying here since the beginning of time.

He opens his mouth in the dark, stretching it, feeling his lips crack. He tries to remember how it feels to sit and drink liquor from a glass, or coffee from a mug. He can only think of the rim of a chipped mug being held against his mouth, and drinking cold water. Then he thinks of how it feels when someone is straddling over his face, holding his head in cradled hands, or by the hair, or by his ears, and pushing their cock into his mouth.

He is suddenly filled with fury. He tries to thrust that thought away, trying so hard that he jerks the chains on his wrists. He has drunk coffee in the past. He has drunk liquor. He has walked down the corridors of HQ. But he still can’t remember which way his fridge door opens, or who made it. He can’t remember the layout of his kitchen.

He sinks back down onto the bed. It doesn’t matter. He won’t see his kitchen again, so it doesn’t matter. He won’t see any of it again.

He drifts from wakefulness into sleep, and back into wakefulness again. No one has been in since he was tidied up after the last man last night. Then Lee is in there, unchaining him, and he walks unsteadily over to the bucket. It’s getting harder to walk each time he stands. The floor seems to sway under his feet. He sits on the bucket and leans the length of his back against the cold of the wall. He hangs his head and tries to do what is asked of him. It’s easy to piss because he’s been waiting for so long, but his bowels won’t move. He presses his hands over his face, and tries again.

‘Come on,’ Lee mutters impatiently. ‘I haven’t got all day. Didn’t someone give you your dose?’

He shakes his head. He feels too tired to speak, and his mouth is too dry.

‘Fucking useless,’ Lee curses, kicking his foot at the pipes that run along the wall.

Illya flinches. He’s too used to that man hitting him.

‘Get back on the bed, then,’ Lee tells him impatiently.

‘I’m thirsty,’ he murmurs.

The tap is only a foot away. He could cup his hands, and drink.

‘Get back on the fucking bed,’ Lee tells him.

It takes him a moment to be able to stand. He goes back to the bed and clips his ankles and lies back. Lee comes to secure his hands. He takes hold of the tie that has been around his neck for weeks and shakes him by it.

‘You’re a fucking waste of space. You should be so fucking grateful that I saved your life.’

Lee has told him he should be grateful so many times that he’s starting to wonder if he should believe it. He’s had so many nightmares about that freezer, but Lee has been merciful, and spared him that fate. He’s let him stay alive. He lets him eat and drink. Sometimes when he raises his hand, he relents, and doesn’t hit.

He closes his eyes, and Lee shakes him again by the tie, then he ties the loose end about the headboard so it’s cinching uncomfortably around his neck. He leaves him in the dark, and he lies there, a maelstrom in his head. He tries to see his kitchen in his mind, tries to remember the make of his fridge. There’s nothing there.

He must have fallen asleep again, because there’s a dark time, and then he’s dreaming, and then he’s drifting back towards reality. He feels the chill air and hears music from above. He hears footsteps coming down the stairs, and voices. Someone says, ‘...filthy down here. I can smell it already.’

He’s so tired. He can’t bear another evening of this. When the light comes on he keeps his eyes closed and turns his head away. He doesn’t want to see his next customer. He just can’t bear it. He feels so raw and naked, and a sob bursts from his mouth. He tries to stop it because Lee is vicious with him afterwards, if he hears him crying. He can’t help it, though. He can’t help that sob.

When Lee falls, and he realises Napoleon is there, it’s as if a miracle has manifested in the room. His brain whirs and fails to process what has happened. When his wrists and ankles are freed he doesn’t know what to do with his limbs. He wants to fall into Napoleon’s arms and sob against him. He knows more needs to be done to get out of here alive, but his mind gives in and he lets Napoleon tell him what to do. He hasn’t done anything without instruction for months, so he lets Napoleon tell him exactly what to do.

Five minutes later, he is breathing clean air, and he can see the sky. It’s night, and there are stars.

 

((O))

 

There’s a pressure against his back, his entire body being pressed backwards, as the engine sound surges. The tarmac is rolling past, painted lines and grass are rolling past, and further away the terminal building seems to be revolving away from them. Another plane is coming in to land, but this one is roaring along the runway, pushing with all its power towards the sky.

There’s a moment of change, and he looks down and sees they have left the ground. Everything is suddenly smaller, growing more and more insignificant. He sees the vast sprawl of New York City and all of its suburbs shrinking below him. Sunlight blazes through the window as the plane banks a little, and glitters on the waterways below. There are patches of ice in the rivers and the tops of the buildings are white with snow. Winter has fallen hard this year.

A hand settles lightly on his knee.

‘All right, IK?’ Napoleon asks.

He turns his head from the window, and smiles.

‘Yes,’ he says.

All the bad things feel like so long ago. All the wounds have healed. In a few places there are scars; where his pelvis was pressed into deep sores against the bed; where men stubbed out their cigarettes on his body; where he scraped his arms to bloody ribbons after he bathed them in bleach. All those things are little reminders. Sometimes when he sees them he is plunged into black memory. Sometimes he manages to move on.

Twice in the past year he has seen men he recognised from that time. The first time he simply froze in the street, unable to move, bile rising in his throat. Napoleon had been with him, thank god, and he had taken him by the arm and walked with him into a little cafe, and sat him down at a table.

‘In the brown suit, by the laudromat,’ Illya had managed to say at last, his mouth dry as sand. ‘One of the men – ’

Napoleon had understood. He had moved fast, as if he were setting on a Thrush adversary. The man had been cuffed and in the hands of U.N.C.L.E. men almost before he had known what was happening. Then Napoleon had been back at Illya’s side, stroking a hand on his back, asking, ‘Are you all right, buddy? I can get you a drink? Or do you want to go home?’

He had felt dizzy. That man had visited him many times. He had always been sadistic. All of those memories had come over him like a cold douche, and he felt as if he had been stripped bare again in front of everyone’s eyes. Sometimes it was impossible to escape.

‘Home,’ he had said, and Napoleon had taken him home.

The second time he saw one he had managed to act himself, twisting the man’s arm behind his back and slamming him against the wall, then calling in to Headquarters for backup. Both men had turned out to be members of Thrush. There had been no way to prove or prosecute them for their actions in the club, but U.N.C.L.E. had been glad enough to have them for a host of other reasons. He had resigned himself to the fact that no one would ever be prosecuted for raping him. The idea of male rape didn’t even exist in law. To most people the term was an oxymoron.

‘Do you think you can deal with that?’ Napoleon had asked him once, and he had shrugged. What could he do? He couldn’t change the law himself. He didn’t have the strength for a fight like that. He didn’t have the strength to even speak about it directly to most people. He wanted to close it all down and move away, not to rake it up day after day, even if his mind tried its best to do that raking.

He had been forced to come to terms with the fact that there were too many men walking around who had used him in that place. He would never find them all. He would never know who most of them were. But it felt good to have just two of them out of circulation.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says.

‘Sorry,’ Illya murmurs. ‘I haven’t been on an aeroplane in – oh, a long time.’

It’s almost a year, he thinks. It must be that long. This is the first time he’s been truly back on duty, first time leaving the country for a mission. He needs to be able to keep himself focussed.

‘You going to be okay?’ Napoleon asks.

He nods. ‘I’m going to be okay, yes.’

It’s a simple mission, not much more than acting as security for a liaison in Italy. It’s a test, really, to see if he’s up to the job. And he will be up to the job. He’s determined of that.

‘Get to Rome, get settled in at the hotel, go down to the local HQ next day for the briefing,’ Napoleon is saying in a calming voice. ‘We don’t need to be on guard until the day after that.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Illya nods. He was there all through the planning process. He knows exactly what’s going to happen.

‘Then a couple of days grace afterwards,’ Napoleon continues. ‘A few days in the sun, Waverly’s treat.’

‘Oh,’ Illya says. He hadn’t been party to that bit of the plan. ‘I didn’t know.’

Napoleon looks smug. ‘No, you didn’t. But we thought it would be good. A little time to decompress after your first overseas mission.’

‘I’ve been on overseas missions before,’ Illya reminds him.

‘Yes, I know,’ Napoleon says. His hand is still lying on Illya’s knee. ‘But not for a while.’

‘I’m not a child,’ Illya says a little irritably.

‘No, you’re not a child,’ Napoleon replies in his most patient tone. ‘No, I don’t think anyone could mistake you for a child. But we’re taking a couple of days to decompress afterwards.’

Illya relaxes into the firmness of Napoleon’s voice. A couple of days to decompress. That is what is going to happen. It’s kind, really, of Waverly. It’s kind of him to let him have that.

He turns his attention to the window again as Napoleon catches the eye of the stewardess. As Napoleon flirts and orders drinks, Illya watches the land far below. They’re so high now that they hardly seem to be moving. They’re tracking up the coast towards Canada. Soon they’ll be out over the ocean. New York is so small and far away that he can’t see it any more. All the people there are so small and far away that they might as well not exist.

‘A martini,’ Napoleon says, passing him his drink. ‘Shaken, and not stirred. Isn’t that how all good spies drink it?’

Illya smiles and takes the drink. He sips at it and leans back against his seat. He’ll talk with Napoleon for a while. Maybe later he’ll get out his book. Napoleon will read a magazine and make eyes at the stewardesses again. That’s something Illya still doesn’t feel like he can do. He’s never really liked flirting anyway, but sometimes it’s necessary for the job. He’s still working on feeling like he might be attractive to other people’s eyes.

‘Are you kidding?’ Napoleon has asked him when he’s spoken about that. ‘Have you looked in any mirrors lately?’

Mirrors are still difficult for him, especially if he catches a glimpse of himself when he’s naked. There are a million little things he needs to work on, but he can function, at last. He can go to work and come home and some days he finds himself forgetting about what happened for an hour or two at a time. Those memories can come up without paralysing him or sending him plummeting most of the time now. He can drink sensibly instead of drinking to obliterate his memory. He has been off the antidepressants for two months.

Napoleon is humming, ‘Come fly with me,’ just under his breath. It all feels so normal that it hurts. The stewardess walks past again, and Napoleon cranes his neck out after she has passed, watching the sway of her hips as she walks.

‘Don’t,’ Illya says.

‘Huh?’ Napoleon asks, looking back at him.

Illya flushes. He hadn’t meant to speak, but he’s committed now.

‘Don’t look at women like that,’ he says. ‘Like they’re a rack of meat.’

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says softly. ‘I’m just looking.’

‘Yes,’ he murmurs, turning to the window again.

He doesn’t know how to express his feelings. He doesn’t know how to explain how it feels to be looked at like that, and preyed upon. He can’t stop Napoleon ogling people and flirting with them, but he doesn’t know how to explain how uneasy it makes him feel sometimes. He never fears anything from Napoleon, but it reminds him too terribly of the looks on the faces of some of the men who came into that room.

‘Illya,’ Napoleon says, his hand on his knee again. It’s indescribably comforting to feel his hand there. ‘I look. That’s the man I am. But I never coerce anyone. I never force them.’

‘No, I know,’ Illya says.

He smiles, and takes another sip of his drink. He knows that about Napoleon. He’s the one person that he feels perfectly safe around. It has taken him a long time to lose the feeling that all men are rapists. He feels an edge of caution around most people, but he knows he could defend himself with ease. He will never have to defend himself from Napoleon.

‘You’re doing okay now,’ Napoleon says, and there’s a hint of a question in his tone.

‘Yes,’ Illya says firmly. ‘Yes, I’m doing okay. Don’t worry. I’ll be all right on the mission.’

He is doing okay, but he will never not have been raped. He will never forget what happened and how it changed him. Some things are impossible to forget. He has spent so many hours with psychiatrists that his time with them blurs in his mind, but he remembers those cautionary words. He will never forget what happened, and he shouldn’t try to. It’s better to accept memories than to repress them. Even if he fully recovers his mental health, he will never be entirely the same person that he was before.

‘How about a game of Botticelli?’ Napoleon asks. ‘Something to pass the time.’

 

((O))

 

It’s not exactly warm in Rome, because it’s winter, but it’s warmer than it was in New York, even at night. The taxi ride from the airport takes them through dark, quiet streets, and they check into the hotel yawning after a long flight. They are both trying to adjust to a time difference of five hours. It’s far later than it should be, and everything is closed.

‘I guess we’ll be hungry until morning,’ Napoleon laments, and Illya laughs.

‘That’s why they fed you on the plane just an hour before we landed. You’ll last until breakfast time.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Napoleon murmurs, and he picks up both cases and makes for the stairs. ‘Maybe there’ll be something in the room.’

‘There’ll be a bed,’ Illya says.

He doesn’t complain about Napoleon taking his case. He just follows him up the stairs and down the corridor to their room.

‘One bed,’ Napoleon says as he flicks on the light. He glances back over his shoulder at Illya. ‘I thought they’d be twins. If you need me to sleep on the floor – ’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Illya tells him.

He gets his suitcase and wastes very little time opening it up and finding his washbag and pyjamas. He takes the washbag down to the bathroom, where he splashes water over his face, brushes his teeth, and uses the toilet. He meets Napoleon coming down the corridor with his own washbag as he returns, and he uses the time while Napoleon is out of the room to quickly get changed. He trusts Napoleon, but he likes to spend as little time as possible out of his clothes, especially in front of anyone else.

He slips in under the covers and relishes the feeling of smooth, clean sheets, a firm mattress, and good pillows. He hasn’t lost his appreciation for a comfortable bed as time has gone on. He spent so long on that awful bed with its thin mattress, unable to move.

Suddenly he’s enormously tired. It’s been so long since he’s spent so much time travelling. He had been used to hopping onto planes every other day, riding time zones like a professional. It will take time to get back into that. He feels so tired, and it’s when he’s tired that it’s hardest to control his thoughts. He’s going to have to work hard to stop a spiral, or try to fall asleep before the thoughts envelop him.

The door opens, closes, and locks. Napoleon is humming lightly as he moves about the room, changing out of his own clothes and into pyjamas.

‘Sleeping beauty?’ he asks lightly, coming over to the bed. ‘Mind if I hop aboard?’

‘No,’ Illya murmurs. It’s kind of Napoleon to be so solicitous.

‘Good, because I’m exhausted,’ Napoleon tells him, and he slips in under the covers. ‘We don’t need to be up too early tomorrow. My plan is to miss breakfast and call room service when we wake up. How does that suit you?’

‘It suits me just fine,’ Illya says. He’s so warm, right on the edge of sleep. He wants to fall asleep before his thoughts start drifting.

‘Do you – mind if I touch you?’ Napoleon asks, and Illya understands by the tone of his voice that he just means touching, a body against a body, and nothing more.

‘I don’t mind,’ Illya says.

He shuffles backwards a little, closer to the centre of the bed. Napoleon moves closer too, until he is spooned along the length of Illya’s back, an arm resting lightly over his flank. They have slept like this before, sharing a bed on missions, but not for a long, long time.

‘It’s good,’ Illya murmurs.

He feels so supremely safe. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel, sleeping in a strange room in a strange place. He wasn’t sure how easy it would be to sleep. But he feels immensely safe like this, with Napoleon’s arm around him. For all those long, long weeks in that room so many bodies had lain with him, but there had never been anything like this; warm, comforting, so purely platonic.

‘I fixed an alarm to the door, and one on the window,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘We’re safe and snug, like bugs in rugs. There won’t be nightmares, because I’m here. Go to sleep, Illya.’

Illya lets go of the last degrees of tension, and lets himself fall asleep.


End file.
